Hostage
by ardavenport
Summary: Obi-Wan needs rescuing. Qui-Gon rescues him.
1. Chapter 1

**HOSTAGE**

- - Part 1

by ardavenport

"Ya gotta see this. This one's really gonna make us." Yagatz led Mooni down the narrow, winding corridor of crumbling gray stone to the cells where Bombi kept his occasional 'guests'. Mooni had no interest at all in whatever grotesque amusement Yagatz and the rest of Bombi's guards were into now but it seemed safer to oblige her than refuse outright.

"Just as long as it's quick. I have to get back to Bora City before dark."

"Ya just gotta have a quick look. You wouldn't believe what it took to take him down." They arrived at a dark metal cell door with one small narrow window in it. Mooni peered inside where Yagatz pointed with a thick gray-scaled finger. The back wall of the cell was one large dingy mirror making the whole space inside visible. A lone figure lay on one of the two bunks.

"What did you do?"

He looked Human, like herself, and a boy as far as she could tell from his back and head visible in the mirror. Dried blood stained the parts of his torn shirt she could see and his bare ankles were shackled. He didn't move or react to Yagatz calls.

"Open this door!" Mooni demanded.

Even though Mooni was a head shorter and slightly built, Yagatz recoiled from her, her flat hairless features shocked. "You got to be kidding. He's the one–"

"I don't care where you got him from or what you plan to do with him. The only reason why you get me here is because we don't ask questions if someone needs help. That means _anybody_. And you just showed me another injured person and I'm going to have him treated. Now open this door!"

Yagatz had never been very smart. She had always been the taking-orders kind of muscle that suited hill-warlords like Bombi. But she did not take orders from outsiders well, either. She called Bombi instead. Minutes later, the Sagast Hills warlord himself showed up and bodily tossed Mooni into the cell with the boy.

She sat stunned in a corner of the cell, and bruised from colliding with the wall and the bunk opposite the boy's. The door slammed shut.

"You want to be in there with him, Mooni, you can stay there!" She heard him bellow as he and Yagatz left.

Mooni painfully clamored to her feet. "Send down S4, you fathead!" No response. They were both gone.

Mooni stared at the now sealed door. What had gotten into Bombi? He would never get another technician to show up at his hideout if he kept her prisoner, or if she didn't return at all. Had he actually gone to the expense of getting his own medical droid? And the medical center and equipment that would have to go with it?

No, he hadn't, she thought. Otherwise, S4 would not have spent the last three hours fixing burns on Bombi's goons from their last fight. And S4 would not be much good to him all alone, not without links and supplies from the Bora City medical center.

"Great. This is just great." She shook her head and looked about. The boy on the bunk had half risen and was looking over his shoulder at her. His face was a mess of bruises. She went to him and he hastily sat up, his legs pulled up to his chest.

"What were they doing?" A wide, blue plastic strip covered his mouth. The boy looked wary but he obviously recognized the green medical technician's insignia on her shirt.

"Sorry," she apologized. "I'm not much good without the droid. And somehow I think that Bombi's not going send S4 down." Mooni unhooked one of her pouches. "I've got a few things that should help with the bruises."

He nodded and let her sit next to him on the bunk. He looked to Mooni like he was mid-adolescent, skinny and not fully grown, but old enough to be treated like an adult.

The first thing she looked at was the plastic covering his mouth\ but it had obviously been put on with a permanent adhesive. "I'm going to need S4 for that."

He nodded his understanding. He did not look like he was quite old enough to shave, much, but even without sprouting facial hair, the plastic strip was stuck to him tight.

"Can you show me what hurts worse?" He pointed to his ribs with his shackled hands. He wore a simple, pale wrap-around shirt with a longer, larger wrap-around shirt over that, both torn and bloodied in places. It was impossible to take either one off with his hands bound, so she just lifted them up to look. She dabbed at the injuries with a couple of cleaning pads from her pouches to separate cloth from skin where the blood had dried. But when she looked more carefully, she could see that the cuts were only superficial.

The bruises looked like boot marks and when Mooni asked, he confirmed that Bombi's thugs had kicked him for sport. Mooni wished she had S4 to check him for internal injuries. Medicine was droid work. Droid maintenance and repair were her work. She was only trained for first-aid because she accompanied the mobile unit when it was sent out for emergencies.

The boy was amazingly tolerant and only winced when she checked some of his worst bruises. He likely had some cracked ribs, but nothing was broken. He even stood for her and let her check his lower torso and legs, but none of the bruises there were as bad as those on the upper part of his body. He had a lump on the side of his head, too, but his eyes were clear and steady. When she heard a muffled groan, she looked more carefully at his face again.

"Did they gag you, too?"

He nodded.

"What did you say to them?"

He shrugged.

Aside from the tools she needed for working on S4, the only things Mooni had were the first-aid supplies she usually carried. But fortunately she had a full kit. None of the injuries on Bombi's guards had been anything that simple bacta patches and sterilizing pads would help with. They had all been long burned gashes and missing limbs. They were unusual injuries but no amount of violence from Bombi's ilk surprised her.

Mooni applied patches to the worst places on his ribs and covered a huge bruise on his cheek and forehead. She also rubbed salve over the raw places on his wrists and ankles under the shackles. Simple as her ministrations were, his blue eyes affirmed his gratitude to her. She inquired about his health in general and commented about the crude manners of Bombi and his kind, but he could only shrug and gesture a little in return, so their 'conversation' did not go very far.

She invited him to lie back down on the bunk again when she finished. His eyes spoke his gratitude again for her help but instead of laying down he sat up straight, his hands in his lap, his legs hanging down, feet almost touching the floor, his eyes closed. It looked odd to Mooni, but it obviously meant that he was feeling better. He remained remarkably calm. Even as badly treated as he was, Mooni saw no trace of tears or dread or nervousness. He looked about as unhappy about being in Bombi's cell as she was, but he was not panicked about it.

He certainly was not an average rich kid, Mooni thought, for it was all but certain that Bombi was ransoming another offworlder. His hair was very ordinary for a human, medium brown, short and thick, except for one long braid tied with colored bands that hung behind his right ear and a small short tail that stuck out like a brush in back. Her youngest son fancied himself as a fashion maven, especially when it came to hair, but Mooni did not remember seeing him wear anything like it. This boy was not local.

What surprised Mooni was that the warlord had abused him so badly. According to rumor, Bombi's first kidnaping had gone as smoothly as that sort of thing could go, with no injury to the victim and a profit large enough for Bombi's toughs to make a nuisance of themselves in the Sagast Hills villages after they got their cut. A modest ransom to a wealthy core-worlder was a fabulous fortune on this settlement world.

Bombi's new venture had certainly caused a lot of local gossip, but in the end that was all that happened. People had talked and talked about doing something about the lawlessness in the hills for as long as Mooni could remember but nothing had been ever done about it. The law enforcement effort would be huge and expensive some factions argued. Others cynically complained that if they could not run the miscreants off to the hills they would just cause trouble in the cities. But Mooni thought that the real problem was that there were too many fools hanging on to the romantic idea of forsaking everything for the life of a bandit in the hills, like running away from home to become a space pirate, but without the danger of decompression in vacuum.

Mooni looked at her gray haired and dusty reflection in the back mirror wall of the cell. She sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees and briefly wondered what had made the worn stains on the stone floor. The cell smelled of old sweat and decay. How long would it take before she was reported missing? She was supposed to meet her daughter for dinner; when would she call the medical center to ask where she was? Or would her supervisor notice she had not checked in when she was supposed to and try signaling? She pondered the permutations for quite a while.

After a long time thinking, Mooni thought about lying down on the other bunk, but looking at it, she wondered if it might be more comfortable on the floor instead. She saw some bunched up material that matched the boy's tunic that he had apparently been using as a pillow on the bunk behind him. He wasn't using it at the moment, but she did not feel like taking it. She got up and crouched, looking under both bunks. There were no obvious concentrations of bad smells or signs of live vermin, but there were plenty of withered remains of some old pests and the corners were crammed with dark crumbly dust. No, the floor would not be more comfortable.

The boy started. Mooni looked up at him. His eyes had opened and he slid off the bunk. Balancing on his shackled feet, he quickly shuffled toward the cell door.

"Hey!" Mooni refrained from grabbing him but she followed close in case he fell over. He was just tall enough to peer out the window. Mooni looked over his head into the gloomy corridor. Bombi had not set a guard, so there was nothing to see, no one to call out to.

"I don't see anything," she finally said. But he kept his bandaged face pressed up close to the bottom of the window, looking as far as he could, first one way, then the other down the corridor.

_Rumble._

It sounded like thunder. Mooni heard another reverberating boom and the faint distant ping of rapid blaster fire. It was not thunder.

"Uh, oh." This time she did put her hands on his shoulders. "Let's not stand too close to the door."

After first resisting, he let her guide him back to the bunk. The battle sounds slowly got closer, louder. They sat together on the end of the bunk closest to the door so that they would be less visible to anyone passing by. The boy remained tense and alert next to the wall; Mooni could not get him to sit back, further away from the door.

Mooni decided that this was not just a drunken fight or petty vengeance when the explosions started rattling their cell. The light fixtures in the ceiling flickered briefly. It sounded like an invasion. Fights between warlords were not unheard of but they were rare. There was enough crime and exploitation to satisfy them and warfare was too much work. It was even more unlikely that the authorities had come after Bombi. Even if they wanted to rescue either of them, they would buy Bombi off before attacking him. At least, Mooni would have preferred that they choose the safer means of rescue.

Then the noise stopped. The blaster fire and explosions went ominously silent. Mooni could hear footsteps running down the corridor and a low humming sound. Mooni kept the boy from getting off the bunk again. She was not so optimistic that this battle survivor would be friendly. The lights flickered again and went out.

"Obi-Wan?"

The male voice was right outside.

Bright light exploded from the cell door. They cringed back together from the sparks and squealing metal. A bright green beam shot out through the door and descended. Mooni watched it cut around the locking mechanism and then vanish. A heavy chunk of metal fell with a bang to the floor. The door slid noisily aside.

A tall bearded male Human entered. The glowing beam lit everything in the cell green.

_A Jedi?_ Mooni thought with shock. _They sent a Jedi to rescue this kid? How important is he?_

"Obi-Wan," the Jedi rushed forward and even though he held the lightsaber up and away from them, Mooni still pressed back away from it. She could not imagine why anyone would use an open-ended energy weapon like that. The boy, Obi-Wan, made a muffled sound as the Jedi's fingers passed over the patches that Mooni had applied and then probed the edge of the strip covering his mouth.

"Don't! You're not going to get that off without solvent; they used a bonding agent."

"Do you have any?" the Jedi demanded, looking directly at her, the lightsaber casting his face in deep shadow, his hand resting on Obi-Wan's shoulder. His gaze flicked down to her technician's insignia.

"Well, yes, with my droid, but I don't know—"

"I've seen it. It's upstairs." He stepped back. Before Mooni could even jump back, the tip of the Jedi's lightsaber flicked forward and back twice. The shackles fell away from Obi-Wan's hands and feet. The tall man looked back toward the ruined door and then paused to frown down at Obi-Wan's bare feet. "There's too much debris. I'm going to have to carry you."

He turned around and crouched. Without any prompting, Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around his neck, his legs around his waist so they rested over the Jedi's side pouches making his wide belt sag downward.

They warily left the cell, the Jedi leading with his lightsaber through the turns of the narrow, ill-kept corridors. Mooni's boots crunched on shards of plastic and metal; once she almost tripped over something. When they turned into an intersection with a still-functioning overhead light, the Jedi extinguished the green lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. They stepped over the remains of Bombi's sentry droids as they passed through now ruined doorways. One huge gray door lay on its side, a few droid appendages sticking out from under it. The Jedi was very careful not to bump Obi-Wan, still clinging to his back, as he ducked under a low entryway into the stairwell. They went up, their boots crunching on more debris. The railings were cut in places.

**End - - Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**HOSTAGE**

- - Part 2

by ardavenport

Their feet echoed above and below in the silence; the ventilation wasn't running. Mooni flinched when she saw a severed and blotchy four-fingered hand amidst more wreckage on the stairs. Except for the timing, that hand might have come from one of the stumps that S4 had been treating a few hours ago. She had seen familiar burned gashes on the walls and through the droid torsos that they stepped around.

_So, Bombi's thugs were fighting a Jedi._

The Sagast Hills warlord had exceeded even her expectations for useless violence and stupidity. Mooni knew next to nothing about them but Jedi were reputed to be invincible. Had it been this one? She looked up at him as she climbed. He wore dark pants and boots, a light wrap-around tunic with sashes over the shoulders and around the waist and a dark belt still sagging low under Obi-Wan's weight. The style and color of the tunic were strikingly similar to the boy's.

Mooni had never heard of any Jedi who were that young. But she supposed that Jedi had to come from somewhere. And young as he was, the boy was old enough to be considered an adult, depending on what planet you were on.

They kept climbing up out of the sub-levels. Mooni was getting tired but the Jedi did not slow down, even carrying Obi-Wan on his back. And Obi-Wan was not that small, either. Then without looking back, the Jedi signaled for her to halt at top of the stairs. He peered cautiously out the doorway.

"Hurry." He hustled her along; she did not need to ask him where they were going. They were heading for Bombi's audience hall. There wasn't much point in being a warlord if you couldn't be big and imposing in front of people. And even though Mooni had only been to this stronghold for medical emergencies, Bombi had always made her present herself to him in that great stone chamber before he would let S4 get to work.

They entered through a wide swinging wooden door. The audience hall was a complete disaster. What remains of the rest of Bombi's sentry and attack droids littered the floor everywhere, along with a few limbs. Tables were cleaved in two, chairs and pedestals overturned and broken. Black gashes and blaster shots marred a sunny mural on the far wall. Some of the overhead lights were shot out. Mooni smelled scorched stone, plastic and metal.

They kept close to the walls. The Jedi obviously expected more attacks. The intensity of his expression and the amount of destruction he had caused did not invite conversation, so Mooni did not ask him about it. Obi-Wan clung silently to his back. His head tucked close to the Jedi's, he had only moved to avoid walls or the edges of doorways.

It did occur to Mooni that she was being rescued and that she should be thankful. But as she surveyed the damage around them, she thought she would have preferred to have been ransomed.

The Jedi set Obi-Wan down on Bombi's enormous stone desk; only a corner of that had been blasted off.

"Your droid's hiding over there," he told her. Mooni stepped around him and spotted silver, white and purple between a couple of large cabinets beyond.

"S4!" She heard a familiar whirring and S4 extended an eye sensor around the edge of a cabinet.

"Mooni! You're here! Where have you been?! Look at what's happened!" S4 rolled forward, her modulated voice rising to a volume and pitch that Mooni rarely heard. Her 'head' was all sensors and voice grid in a humanoid arrangement of eyes, mouth and ears. Her hand-limbs gestured her distress while her other probe-limbs stayed close to her body.

"I can see. Come on. You've got another patient." S4's head sensors perked up right away. She rolled forward to follow. Then Mooni heard S4's servos run sharply in reverse. She turned to see the medical droid zooming backwards.

"What?" She turned around to look at where S4's pincer probe pointed. The Jedi crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, looking impatient, a room full of droid wreckage behind him.

"Oh, no," Mooni grumbled. She went and dragged S4 back, her wheels squealing protest. S4 had always had very good self-preservation programming. She doubtlessly had rushed to hide when the first weapon had been drawn. "He's not after you. Do you look like an attack droid?" She parked S4 in front of Obi-Wan. "There."

"Oh!" Immediately S4 was all probes and sensors. "Oh, oh. Oh." Obi-Wan sat still and looked unhappy.

"Just take the gag off, we don't have time for anything more here," the Jedi told her, scanning the room warily. S4's probes trembled at the sound of the voice behind her.

"Well then, do something useful and get some water," Mooni shot back. "S4's reservoir is empty."

The Jedi's eyes widened in surprise, making him look a bit less imperious. Then he nodded curtly and went to the back of the room toward Bombi's refreshment alcove. Mooni watched him go. He was tall and imposing, with long brown, aristocratic hair and a trimmed beard but he looked a bit scraggly, his white tunic and sashes smudged and singed in places.

"Thank you," S4 said gratefully, her voice modulation having gone back to its usual low pitch. S4's reservoir was not dry. They had replenished all of S4's stores from their transport just before one of Bombi's henchmen had dragged her off to 'see something.'

"Did you do these?" S4 asked, peeling away the patches from Obi-Wan's face. The swelling had gone down but the bruises had darkened.

"It's all I had," Mooni replied. "They locked me in a cell with him." S4 nodded and clicked and beeped, her lower sensors passing over his chest. She had injectors ready by his face, her slender metal fingers on one corner of the blue strip. "Please remain still. I wish to test this before proceeding." Obi-Wan gripped the edge of the desk to anchor himself in response.

With a fleeting chemical smell, S4 applied solvent and neutralizer, and peeled back a corner, her extended sensors rapidly scanning and repositioning above. She added another probe with an open bacta gel tube. "This adhesive was not meant to be used on flesh. He will have to be screened for toxic effects along with his other injuries."

"As soon as we get out of here," Mooni promised. S4's hands and probes repositioned themselves. One hand held a barrier under Obi-Wan's nose between it and her working appendages. Obi-Wan steadied himself again and closed his eyes this time. S4 worked swiftly, all her injectors and probes in motion while she peeled back the strip. Her pincers guided the evacuation tubes to take up the excess. She worked around the edges and then moved inward until finally she pulled the strip away. A wadded up, bloody gray rag came out with it. Obi-Wan coughed and gulped. S4 gently lifted his chin up and smeared clear bacta gel over his jaw, cheeks and lips.

"Here." The Jedi had returned; he held up a canister. S4's appendages remained steady, but the rest of her trembled. She extended a tube and drew out the water, passing it through her sterilizer before it gurgled to her injectors.

"Cuts. Ulcers. His teeth are damaged," S4 listed. Obi-Wan's eyes watered as S4 added topical anesthetic, but he did not move.

"We need to get out of here," the Jedi urged them again. "They could be back any time." He leaned a little too close to Mooni as he watched S4 work, but she refrained from pushing him away. S4 withdrew, her sensors and probes clicking back into place. "He can travel, but–" she began.

"Fine." He handed Obi-Wan a tall pair of boots and a lightsaber. S4 backed away from them. Obi-Wan silently took both and started to pull on the boots. Mooni saw that the Jedi now wore a hooded, dark brown robe over his clothes. Was it something he had taken off before starting his rampage?

"I hope there are still transports left in the bay, because it's a long walk back to town," Mooni commented.

"We have a transport," he informed her.

Obi-Wan slid off the desk, lightsaber in hand. His bruised face looked determined.

A small, tinkling sound echoed in the large chamber.

Suddenly a shock wave of air hurled Mooni back across the desk to land behind it with S4, Obi-Wan and the Jedi nearly coming down top of her. Mooni's eyes registered the white hot flash before the deafening boom of the explosion. A wave of heat and bits of debris hit the desk. The thunderous echo of it still filled Mooni's ears while everything around them settled.

The Jedi had a patronizing hand on her shoulder, unnecessarily preventing her from rising. Mooni refrained from snapping the obvious at him, that she was no more likely to get up from the cover of the desk than S4, cowering next to her.

She smelled new dust and smoke. The Jedi and Obi-Wan scrambled to either side of the desk and crouched, lightsabers ready. The two of them nodded to each other in unison. Mooni heard noise, crunching footsteps, grumbling voices, droid clicks and whirs. The noises got closer. The Jedi motioned for Mooni to stay.

_Do I look like I'm crazy?_ Mooni thought testily. The grumbling and voices became more distinct. Mooni heard Bombi's baritone rising above the others.

"You had better be worth this, Ulhar! Look at this!" Bombi yelled.

"I don't see any bodies," an unfamiliar, hissing female said. "They're still here..."

"Nothing could have survived that detonator! I don't–"

The Jedi and Obi-Wan simultaneously ignited their lightsabers and leapt around the desk. Obi-Wan's lightsaber flashed bright pale blue. The weapons hummed and cracked. Bombi screamed. Blasters fired; bodies fell. Mooni was not about to risk a laser bolt through the eye trying to see what was going on but S4 telescoped a sensor up over the edge of the desk. An overhead light went out with an explosion of sparks and a bang.

"Hey," Mooni rapped S4. "Let me look." S4 activated the side screen on her torso. She could only see shadows though the dimly lit smoke, but the Jedi lightsabers shone through it all. Constantly in motion, they cut down everything and deflected every blaster bolt. Mooni wondered why Jedi did not injure themselves with them, they moved so fast. The green blade conspicuously swung larger circles and jumped to more places, but the blue seemed to be in no danger.

The fight only lasted a few minutes. Huge droid parts crashed to the floor. A few retreating yells and some moaning bodies on the floor were all that remained of Bombi's gang. Mooni didn't peek up above the desk until she saw the lightsabers on S4's screen go out at the far end of the room. S4 was trembling again. When Mooni did look, the room was strewn with more wreckage, more injuries and more severed body parts. At least they were fresh this time. They might be re-attachable.

The Jedi strode back toward them, Obi-Wan walking more carefully just behind him. Dirtier and more smudged with soot, the Jedi at least looked like he had been exerting himself. His expression pained, Obi-Wan held his left arm close to his chest though he was far more mobile than Mooni would have expected from someone who had been beaten so badly. Mooni wondered if Jedi had some immunity to pain along with being invincible.

After carefully surveying the room and apparently deciding there wasn't anything else to destroy, the tall Jedi went to Obi-Wan and put his arm around him. Obi-Wan leaned on him as they returned back to Bombi's desk.

Mooni nudged the terrified droid next to her. "Come on S4. You've got more patients."

* * *

"Oh, no!!" S4 squealed, pulling away.

"Hey!" Mooni yelled at the retreating medical droid. Lubricant squirted on the floor where it used to be. Annoyed Mooni turned to where S4 frantically pointed.

"Oh."

The Jedi had entered her workroom and stood by the door.

On the trip back to Bora City he had introduced himself as Qui-Gon Jinn, though none of them had spoken much then. She had not seen him since S4 downloaded Obi-Wan's specs for the medical center when they arrived. He had cleaned up and wore his loose dark robe, his arms folded into its enormous sleeves before him. He looked deceptively academic, long-haired and harmless, for the moment.

"I wanted to thank you for assisting my Padawan. That was very kind of you." Mooni did not know what a "Padawan" was but she assumed that it was Jedi-talk for 'apprentice'. Mooni had heard more than she ever needed to know about Jedi from one of the city security people who picked them up from Bombi's hideout. Like medical technicians, Jedi apprenticed new workers, but instead of two years of employment, Jedi tutelage lasted for 10-15 years or longer and it was more like a monastic lifestyle than a job, with periodic life-threatening peril and mass dismemberments thrown in.

"It's what I'm supposed to do," she replied, putting her equipment down and standing. "If someone is sick or injured, we don't ask questions."

"An admirable code. And sadly not as well observed in the galaxy as it should be."

"Hmm, I've said that more than once." Mooni thoroughly agreed with the sentiment. "Did they take care of Obi-Wan?" Mooni estimated that with all the bruising Obi-Wan had, he would need a half-hour in a bacta tank at least.

"They will be finished shortly. Then we will be leaving, but I wanted to convey my thanks before we left." He nodded politely. "And now I will leave you to your droid maintenance."

"Wait." The Jedi paused in the doorway.

"S4!" Mooni raised her voice. "Get over here!"

"What?!" S4's modulator voice pitch went up again.

"You heard me. Get your rusty can over here!" Self preservation was good but S4 had no excuse for hiding now. S4 slowly rolled from behind the parts cabinet. Mooni waited impatiently until she stopped next to her but the droid kept an arm's length away from the Jedi, who looked quite amused.

"S4, you did good work," she announced. The Jedi inclined his head in an abbreviated bow toward the medical droid.

"Thank you for your assistance," he said. "It was much appreciated by my apprentice. And myself." After a moment while S4's sensors stayed trained on the Jedi, Mooni rapped her torso.

"Oh, yes. You are quite welcome." Her voice modulator shifted nervously between high and low pitches. "I am here to serve, of course."

"Here, we'll go with you." Mooni hooked her elbow under one of S4's arms, dragging her forward. Her wheels squealed only a little before giving in. "I'd like to see what Obi-Wan looks like without all the bruises." The Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn, stepped back, allowing them to exit first.

They strolled down the corridor to the lift tubes and discussed Bombi's demise. They had been able to re-attach his arm, but he was not only in trouble with the local authorities; intergalactic authorities were thinking about prosecuting him as well. The Jedi had not had any interest in Bombi at all until he had invited a criminal that they were looking for into his hideout. At enormous cost, Bombi had captured the Jedi's apprentice and had been foolish enough to try to ransom him. After all, it had worked once before with an interstellar tourist. Bombi's new status as former warlord and his wrecked holdings proved what a fantastically bad idea that had been.

They exited the lift and turned down the corridor toward the injuries wards. Obi-Wan was still in the tank when they entered the darkened room where they were treating him. The strongest light came from the horizontal bacta tank where the boy floated, supported by the harnesses at his head and shoulders, lower torso and feet. The bruises and swelling were nearly gone over his whole body. And the breath mask on his face had an attachment that would accelerate the healing of his mouth as well.

To Qui-Gon Jinn's credit, his expression softened to something that Mooni thought looked like real compassion. In the tank, Obi-Wan stirred, opened his eyes and turned his head so that he looked right at the Jedi. His long, thin braid floated above his face. The strands of his untied hair tail floated under him. His hand waved in their direction though the harness limited his arm motion. Qui-Gon Jinn responded with a smile and a gesture. He actually had a very pleasant smile. He stepped up to the tank and laid his hand on it. Obi-Wan nodded back and closed his eyes.

S4 kept Mooni between herself and the Jedi as she clicked and bleeped to her fellow droids.

"He looks good," Mooni commented. "He should be ready to hack up a whole army in no time."

Qui-Gon Jinn turned, the glow of the tank behind him. "You disapprove of our methods?" She walked forward to join him. Jinn's fingers still rested on the side of the tank.

"Well, maybe not disapprove. I won't argue that Bombi didn't get what he deserved. But I might like to point out..." Mooni gestured to S4, who remained at a respectful distance. "When you're out there in the galaxy, chopping things off. Just remember..." Her other arm indicated the room, the equipment, the tank. "...we're the ones who have to put them back on."

– **END –**

(This story first posted on tf.n - - 29-Jan-2006)

**Disclaimer:** All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.


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